Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Person-by-Person Update

I noticed that I haven't posted in awhile, so I'll give the run-down one person at a time.

Anna: For sale on most days. She is 3 1/2 and showing every bit of her age. Being a girl, she adds whiny to the normal 3-year-old nonsense. I think I'll throw myself a party when she turns 4. But she is still our sweet little girl at times. We have fun together doing her hair and nails. She's changed her Kai-Lan addiction into a princess addiction and her favorite is Rapunzel. She's also been watching some Barbie movies (and the boys enjoy them too!) She's doing very well in preschool and just today identified all of her letters correctly. It's so fun to teach her and watch her develop intellectually. She definitely takes after her father in memorization skills. She learns her verses for Tiny Trackers with no effort and has near-perfect recall on them.

Ben: My little kindergartener is growing by leaps and bounds this year. He is showing a lot of responsibility in household chores and helping me in general. He's doing very well with his schoolwork, especially math, and he loves having Daddy do some of the teaching. Rob teaches math, science, and does Ben's read-alouds. He is enjoying soccer, although he is a pretty slow player. That's pretty typical for him, as he takes things a little slower until he feels more comfortable. What's funny is that he is a self-proclaimed assistant coach. He picks up quickly on what the coach wants the players to do and the reinforces it on the field.

Matthew: I think I am enjoying him more and more as he gets older. He was a fun toddler, but so active that it was hard to just enjoy him. Now that he's older, he is more responsible and fun to talk to. We've been making a huge effort to eliminate as many preservatives and artificial colors from our diets and we can see a change in his behavior. (Those are the things that cause hyperactivity by the way, not sugar.) He is so much calmer in general. He's going great in school, but more importantly, he's doing much better when he plays with other children. We are watching three boys three days a week for three hours each day (catchin' a theme?) and he does so well with them. Actually, all six of the kids are doing very well together, so much so that when the other family's dad worked from home on Monday, all six kids had a fit!

Rob: I love the times when Rob is actually awake...and that's not too often. He is working 50 hours a week, although for the next 2-3 weeks he will work 58 hours. We're very thankful for the extra income and that we homeschool so Rob has a chance to spend time with the kids each day. He loves his new job and we are adjusting to keeping things quiet in the morning so he can sleep in.

Me: I am slowly learning to readjust to life with fibromyalgia. I have learned a few things to avoid eating and have had to cut out a few activities, namely working in the nursery and choir. I'm not sad about leaving the nursery behind as I don't really enjoy it, but it's hard to give up choir. However, it is painful to hold the huge choir folders and stand in one place for long periods of time. Perhaps once I get the pain under control I can return, but until then I will pour my energies into making cards and encouraging others. I was just reading today about art therapy for fibro patients and thought, "Yay! I need to stamp more!" I'm learning each day to take things at my pace, but I am also seeing all of the ways God has prepared us for this season of my life. I need to write it all down sometime.

That's kind of how we're doing at the moment. :)

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Bat Story

I'm finally able to tell the story of the bat attack last week. Granted, I'm doing this in the afternoon and I may still shudder a bit, but at least I can put it into words :)

Last Tuesday night, I put the kids to bed and came downstairs to do some stamping. I was actually awake and ready to work on Christmas cards for a nursing home ministry and work on my classes coming up this week. Part way through cutting some of the pieces to the cards, I heard a strange noise. I went into the living room and turned off the fan and listened. It sounded like scratching on the inside of our tin ceiling. The more I listened, the more I realized that something was up in the ceiling!! I didn't see any way for it to get out and we have heard mice in the walls in the past, so I just figured the thing got a little higher up. And then I saw something start to creep out of the decorative thingy in the center of the ceiling.

I screamed and the whatever-it-was went right back into the ceiling. It did look like a bat, but I didn't really get a good look at it. I then proceeded to wander around the house in a panic and talk to myself. Seriously, what do you do in this situation? Normally, I would have barricaded myself in my bedroom and let Rob deal with it. But he was at work, so it was up to me to take care of It. I tried calling the landlord, but he wasn't home. I went over to our neighbor on the other half of the house, but he wasn't home. While I was outside, I noticed that every single light in the neighborhood was off. I then proceeded to wander around and mutter some more. Then our neighbor came home, so I rushed outside and asked him what to do. He thought it could be a raccoon (fabulous) or a bat (ugh) and just wished me luck. THANK ALOT!!!

I figured at this point the only thing that might keep me sane was going upstairs with the phone, wait for Rob to call, and then BEG him to come home. I folded laundry to keep my mind off the creature in my ceiling, periodically banged on the floor upstairs to keep it away, and played N64. Time went by VERY SLOWLY while I waited for a phone call. When Rob did finally call, I told him right off what was going on. His supervisor very graciously allowed him to come home. He didn't hear anything, but he did call the police to see if there was an animal control service we could call. There wasn't. So Rob stayed downstairs with the lights off to see if he could find it while I went to bed.

Little did we know that the bat (and it turned out to be) had already left the ceiling. More than likely, it happened before Rob came home. We found this out when I woke up at 12:15 am to a bat flapping around my bedroom! I screamed and jumped out of bed, covering my head and back with a pillow as I cowered near the bed. Rob shot upstairs and flipped on the light, which made the bat settle down and perch on a decorative thing. Rob told me to stay put and I said, "Okay." He then changed his mind and asked me to slowly leave the room. I said, "Okay," and didn't move. I was paralyzed with fright. Rob had to pull me off the floor and out of the room. He asked if I wanted to go downstairs, but I really didn't want to find out if the bat had any friends. I crawled into bed with Ben and the boys (who had awakened to my screaming) and I kept tabs on Rob as he proceeded to catch the bat over the next two hours.

The first thing Rob did was go online to find out what to do. He got a heavy coat, hat, and gloves on and went upstairs with a broom, blanket, and bucket. He pulled the air conditioner out of the window in hopes that it would just fly out. He said he spent a lot of time just staring at the thing wishing someone else would do this for him :) But he was very brave and kept working at getting the bat down and out. He kept getting screeched at and was afraid of being attacked, so he took a few breaks to let it calm down. It flew to our window then the bottom of the bedframe before finally flying under the bed and getting itself caught in a bag. Rob tried to shake it out of the bag and out the window, but it was caught. Finally, he threw the whole bag onto the roof and let the bat fend for itself.

For a few days after that, I would jump at the least little noise. I'm still a little hesitant at night and Matthew spent three days sleeping with me until Rob came home. Our landlord did seal the thing the bat was hiding in better and showed us where we had some huge gaps in our windows that needed to be sealed up as well. Thankfully, bats around here are pretty solitary so that should have been it, but my extra-sensitive sense of hearing keeps telling me otherwise at night. UGH!! I'm sure I'm supposed to learn some lesson from all of this, but I'll have to stop freaking out at night first :)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

First Days of School

We started our school week on Monday and it was a pretty tough day getting used to a real schedule again. Tuesday went better...then we had a bat incident on Tuesday night that left Rob and I pretty exhausted, so we've just been eeking our way through the material with the boys. Rob had to leave work early Tuesday night to help catch the thing, so he worked 14 hours yesterday to make up for it. Needless to say, we're all pretty exhausted. I'll tell the full bat story once I stop jumping at the least little noise.

Ben had his first soccer practice today and it went very well. He's a great little player and I think he's really going to enjoy himself. Matthew wants to try basketball in the winter, so that's why he's not playing soccer. That and I don't think he enjoyed it a whole lot anyway. Both boys will be taking swim lessons so we'll be a little busy in the evenings. Thankfully, all I have to do is sit during these activities, so there's no stress for me :) And I'm also thankful we homeschool or poor Ben would be completely wiped out by the end of the week!

During the summer months, our church has a Wednesday night program for the kids. Last night was the last night of the program and they gave out awards to the kids who had the top three places in points. Matthew won first place over all of the 1st-3rd graders. We're very proud of him, especially since he did all of his Bible memory on his own. God has gifted him with the same memorization skills as his father :)

The boys both wrote stories today in school, so I thought I'd share them both to end the post. Ben had to write about Pat the Rat, a character in the little stories he is reading.

"Pat is a fat rat. Pat is fat because he eats too much cheese and doesn't exercise. He does not like being fat, so he's going to try to exercise and not eat the fat kind of cheese but the skinny kind."

Matthew had to write a story he heard from a family member, but had to write it from that person's point of view. He chose a story his dad told him about the time Grandpa Litwiller ran over some bunnies. I wonder if Grandpa remembers doing that? I left the spelling errors as he wrote them :)

"My dad was mowing the lawn and accidently mowd over a bunny nest. Two died. Me and my brothers wanted to hold the bunnys. My dad said leave them alone. We held them."